This summer was one of the most eventful summers in my life, containing perhaps the most transformative five weeks I've ever experienced, at least in recent memory. I married two people. I traveled throughout the state and into Canada. I fell in love. And I took a whopping four weeks of vacation between July and September. As a result, I feel upended and a bit misplaced.

The three weeks from August 25th to September 15th, I feel into a pretty intense but low level depression. I worked. I talked on the phone to streamsandpools. I watched TV and stared at the ceiling. I spun and processed and tried to be as unmoving and as unmotivated as possible. I didn't socialize. I also didn't create.

In early September, my mother lost half of her finger to an infection. Seeing her at home valiantly trying to work her life one finger short while hiding dishrags stained with blood, still managing to cook more food than I could ever eat, still insisting on cleaning up (I let her) and doing laundry (I did not let her), wrenched my gut. And the mortality of the situation, the embracing of the humor in tragedy that my family has passed to me, is something I've been trying to listen to and sit with.

Nevertheless, my trip to Canada by way of Columbus shook me out of my normal, and this week since I've returned, I've been spending time trying to reconnect to myself and to ease myself into a sense of what I want to do, and what I need to do. It's not very easy. I've been off my practice and out of the habit of creating regular art or expression since the early part of July.

As a result, I find two things are happening. Firstly, I have a tendency to want to gloss over the routine parts of my life I'd like to share here for the shiny images of fiction-tinged narrative. Secondly, I am back at a place where I feel I have a blank slate. So much has changed and so quickly that I have no idea what I really would like to do or play with. The answer to the first is to start writing entries like this one. The answer to the second is relax, breathe, and realize that emptiness is a gift.

I feel like a journey has been brought to me, and it's one that I can choose to take. However, it's not one that I sought or crafted or beckoned. I am going to take it, for many reasons, but somewhat importantly because that's what I do. But it feels like a supreme act of faith to agree to something without fully understanding the shape of it. It scares me more than I've been scared in a while. But I'm coming to see that as a good indication of a life worth living, and an adventure that will challenge and stretch. In my less enlightened moments, of course, I see it as a cause to go to bed and pretend that I'm a piece of driftwood, bothering nobody with nowhere to be.

It's a process.

Tonight I've created a nice, new schedule for myself that involves waking up a full hour before having to go to work. Imagine that. Not rolling out of bed, into the shower, and then into the chair to code. Taking time to do my morning rituals, look out the window, even make coffee. And I've made time every day to read for half an hour. This is because in order to really commit to this journey, I need a set of tools and I need to be fully connected to inspiration and intuition. There's just no other way to do it, and no other way to make it happen. After my nice, relatively solitary (with a fun music concert highlight in the middle) weekend, I jump in and I see what will come of it all.

My mood is somewhat muted, but I also feel more motivated. The rains have come early, but I really don't mind them. They feel quieting and calming after the sunny activity of the last three months. I hope I can hold that fondness for them through the long winter to come.